David Bowie’s hair sells for £13,700 at auction

A lock of David Bowie’s hair has sold for £13,700 at an auction in Beverly Hills.

The hair was taken by Wendy Farrier, who cut a small piece of Bowie’s hair in 1983 to be used for his waxwork at Madame Tussauds in London. She kept a lock of it in a frame for 33 years, before passing it on to auction house Heritage Auctions.

One of Prince’s guitars sold for £102,000 at the same auction. Known as Prince’s ‘yellow cloud’ guitar, it was used in many Prince performances and was bought at the auction by Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts football team.

Irsay previously paid £1.5m in December for a drum kit used by Ringo Starr in The Beatles.

However, some of the Bowie items failed to sell at Heritage’s auction. A signed copy of his 1971 album ‘Hunky Dory’ and the alternative full-colour sleeve artwork for his 1976 album ‘Station To Station’ failed to meet their reserve price. They can still be bought for £465 and £743.50 respectively from Heritage’s website.

The sale attracted controversy after the organisers of the Emmys ordered the withdrawal of an Emmy statue won by Whitney Houston. Following her death in 2012, Houston’s 1986 Emmy – won for her performance of ‘Saving All My Love For You’ at the Grammys – was the subject of a restraining order against Heritage, who agreed to withdraw the statue.